Sunday, January 06, 2013

NHL Lockout is Over, Americans Look Forward to Not Watching Hockey Again

It took 16 hours of talks in New York on Saturday, with concessions from both sides. It took 113 days. A total of 625 regular-season games were sacrificed, or over half the 2012-13 season. It took months of bitter sniping, petty politics, false hope and broken hearts.

But at around 5 a.m. on Jan. 6, the word finally spread around the hockey world: The NHL and the NHLPA had reached a verbal agreement on a tentative framework for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Drop the puck. The NHL will be finally back, with a 10-year CBA solidified between union chief Donald Fehr and Commissioner Gary Bettman. As Fehr said, via Sportsnet: "Any process like this is difficult; it can be long...we have the framework of a deal."